Sinclair Lewis American writer first Nobel laureate in the United States Date of Birth: 07.02.1885 Country: USA

Biography of Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis, an American writer and the first American Nobel Prize laureate, was born in Sauk Centre, a newly built town in the center of Minnesota with a population of less than 3,000 people. In his novel "Main Street" (1920), Lewis described this town in a satirical manner under the name Gopher Prairie. His father, Edwin D. Lewis, was a country doctor and the prototype for Doctor Kennicott in "Main Street," while his mother, Emma (Kermott) Lewis, was the daughter of a Canadian doctor who fought on the side of the Union during the Civil War. Emma Lewis had tuberculosis and would travel to the southwest of the country for the winter. When Sinclair was 5 years old, she passed away, and a year later, his father remarried Isabelle Warner. According to one of Lewis's biographers, Mark Schorer, Lewis was raised in an astonishingly callous and typically bourgeois atmosphere.

Sinclair, the youngest of Edwin Lewis's three sons, was an awkward, freckled, red-haired boy whose unusual views and behavior often provoked ridicule from both his peers and adults. He disliked engaging in sports, preferring to read poetry and take solitary walks instead. In 1902, at the age of 17, he enrolled at Oberlin Academy, but his dream was to study at Yale University in New Haven, where he was accepted a year later. At Yale, Lewis began writing poetry in the pseudo-medieval style of the popular Victorian poets Swinburne and Tennyson, and one of his gothic ballads was published in the university's literary magazine - a great honor for a freshman. Lewis later worked in the editorial staff of this magazine and established himself as a promising young writer. Many professors held him in high regard as a talented and witty young man, although Lewis himself later said that life at Yale was no better than in Sauk Centre. During his student breaks in Sauk Centre, Lewis, with nothing to do, conceived the idea of a novel about provincial life, which he decided to call "The Village Virus" and which, fifteen years later, became "Main Street." In 1904 and 1906, during summer breaks, Lewis traveled on a cattle boat to England, where he gathered material for his future books. In 1906, as usual, he returned to Yale after the break, but soon left New Haven and became a janitor at the socialist commune Helicon Hall near Englewood, New Jersey. However, the socialist commune soon bored the future writer as quickly as the university did, and he went to New York, where he began writing. His poems and short stories were published in various magazines, and Lewis became the assistant editor of the magazine "Transatlantic Tales."

At the end of the following year, Lewis sailed to Panama, unsuccessfully tried to find work, and worked for a while on the construction of the Panama Canal before arriving in New York in December. In January 1908, he returned to Yale and received his diploma in June. Meanwhile, several of Lewis's poems were published in a San Francisco magazine, receiving high praise from William Rose Benét, who sent the young writer an encouraging letter. This was followed by a period of wandering. Lewis briefly returned home, then worked as a journalist in Waterloo, Iowa, San Francisco, and Washington, but he never settled anywhere - he was fired from some newspapers, and he left others himself. For a short time, Lewis lived in an artists' colony in Carmel, California, where he met writers such as George Sterling and Jack London. Since he couldn't get his own stories published, he had to sell ideas to Jack London, some of whose stories were written based on Lewis's plots. In 1910, Lewis returned to New York and spent the next five years working in various publishing houses and magazines. His first published work was a children's book called "Hike and the Aeroplane" (1912), which was released under the pseudonym Tom Graham. A little over a year later, his first serious novel, "Our Mr. Wrenn" (1914), was published, which tells the story of a young dreamer who closely resembles Lewis himself. The protagonist goes on adventures to London, where he encounters love and disappointment and returns to America sobered and undoubtedly more practical. "Our Mr. Wrenn" was followed by "The Trail of the Hawk" (1915), a novel that, according to the contemporary American literary critic Martin Light, is "in the spirit of 'Don Quixote' - lively and optimistic." Although both novels were relatively well-received, the royalties received were insignificant.

In 1914, Lewis married Grace Livingston Hegger. They had a son named Wells, named after English writer H.G. Wells. They divorced in 1928, and shortly after, Lewis married Dorothy Thompson, a well-known journalist, with whom he also had a son named Michael. Lewis divorced Dorothy Thompson in 1942. Lewis's professional career as a writer essentially began in 1915 when the Saturday Evening Post paid him one thousand dollars for the short story "Nature, Inc." During this time, he received other lucrative offers, which led him to leave George Doran's publishing house, where he had been working, and start writing. In the following four years, Lewis wrote numerous stories for popular periodicals and four novels of varying quality. For example, "Job" (1917) is considered one of Lewis's best early books, while "The Innocents" (1917) is often referred to as his worst. In 1919, another novel by Lewis, "Free Air," was published, a story about a car trip across America. With the publication of "Main Street" in 1920, Lewis established his reputation as a major writer and social critic. Before this, most American writers had portrayed small-town life with humor and sympathy, contrasting the quiet provincial life with the decaying, mercenary cities. Lewis, however, brilliantly portrayed the complacency and narrow-mindedness of American small-town customs in "Main Street." The novel's heroine, Carol Kennicott, marries a phlegmatic small-town doctor and moves to Gopher Prairie, hoping to inspire the townspeople with her enthusiasm and cultural ideals. However, she herself becomes infected with the "village virus," the stagnant and puritanical ways of provincial life.

"Main Street" was praised or criticized as a social document, but universally commended as a work of art. For example, American critic Stanton Coit wrote a few months after the novel's publication, "Neither Jane Austen nor George Eliot managed to depict provincial England of the past century with greater expressiveness than Mr. Lewis depicted the life of a small modern American town with its mediocrity, its humor and enthusiasm, pettiness and potential grandeur, countless miserable comedies, and hidden dirty tragedies." American literary scholar Perry Miller believed that Lewis, as an artist, drew much from Charles Dickens. "He knew Dickens by heart," Miller wrote, "and in books like 'Main Street,' he tried to apply the Dickensian technique of artistic exaggeration to contemporary America." "Main Street" was followed by even more controversial works, each addressing different problems of American society. In "Babbitt" (1922), limited and hypocritical middle-class businessmen are depicted. In the novel "Arrowsmith" (1925), the main character is a doctor whose noble ideals are stifled by the "Babbitts." In "Elmer Gantry" (1927), the novel exposes the activities of churchmen from a different perspective. "Dodsworth" (1929) explores the conflict between European and American culture through the story of a vain, artistic businessman. "Ann Vickers" (1933) showcases the corruption of public services. In all of these novels, Lewis exposes the vices of the middle class - complacency, hypocrisy, and ignorance - with biting wit and extraordinary mimicry. Lewis meticulously collected material for his best books, often consulting experts in the relevant field, such as popular writer Paul de Kruif when writing "Arrowsmith" and evangelist Lewis Birge Bowdoin while working on "Elmer Gantry."

Lewis's popularity as a social critic and writer fluctuated over the years. For example, in the early 1920s, many critics agreed with H.L. Mencken that a novel like "Babbitt" was a "social document of the highest order." During this time, Lewis had a very high reputation and was considered one of the best American writers. When he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, he refused to accept the award, stating that he did not believe in literary awards and that there were other writers more deserving of the recognition. After that, Lewis's popularity soared even higher, becoming even more controversial. By the end of the 1920s, he gained international recognition and was considered one of the boldest and sharpest American writers. In 1930, Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his powerful and expressive narrative art and his rare ability to create new types and characters with satire and humor." In his welcoming speech, a member of the Swedish Academy, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, said, "Yes, Sinclair Lewis is an American. He writes in a new language - American, in the language of 120 million human souls." Karlfeldt added, "The new American literature began with self-criticism. This is a sign of its health. Sinclair Lewis has the character of the first pioneers. He is a true American pioneer." In his Nobel lecture, titled "The American Fear of Literature," Lewis spoke out against those who still "fear any literature other than that which extols all things American, both faults and virtues equally." Discrediting Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and Alcott as "sentimental imitators of Europeans," Lewis praised writers like Hamlin Garland, who, from his perspective, wrote the truth about American reality. "After reading Mr. Garland's book 'Main-Travelled Roads,' I realized that there is someone who believes that the farmers of the Midwest can sometimes be trapped, hungry, mean - but also self-sacrificing. And I sighed with relief: it means that I can write about life as a living life," Lewis said.

After receiving the Nobel Prize, Lewis's writing declined, and his relationship with critics turned for the worse. Out of the ten novels he wrote, only a few received high critical acclaim. In the novel "It Can't Happen Here" (1935), written during the Great Depression, the story takes place in the United States, where fascists come to power. In the novel "Cass Timberlane" (1945), an elderly judge falls in love with a frivolous 24-year-old girl named Ginny Marshland. In the novel "Kingsblood Royal" (1947), Lewis addresses the oppressed position of African Americans in America.

Throughout his life, Lewis drank heavily, which undermined his health. In his last years, the writer lived in Europe, mainly in Italy. His final novel, "World so Wide," was published shortly after his death. Lewis died of a heart attack in Rome on January 10, 1951.

Critics had divided opinions about Lewis's work. In 1940, American literary critic Alfred Kazin called Lewis fundamentally uncritical as a writer, loving his satirical characters and identifying himself with them. In 1951, American writer Joseph Wood Krutch spoke positively about Lewis's mimetic talent but also noted that he "abused mimesis as an artistic technique."

More contemporary critic James Lundquist appreciated one purely American quality in Lewis that connected him with renowned American writers such as John Dos Passos, Gore Vidal, and Terry Southern. "Lewis entered literature just at the moment when the glaring American tastelessness of the 20th century became evident even to Americans themselves," Lundquist wrote. "When Lewis describes what happens in small and big cities with housewives, businessmen, scientists, pastors, industrialists, he relieves us of the fear that haunts us everywhere." "The great novels of the 1920s," Perry Miller wrote, "were written with such enthusiasm that the sharp criticism contained in them turned into praise." "I wrote Babbitt out of love for him, not out of hatred," Lewis told Miller.

Sinclair Lewis left a lasting impact on American literature with his sharp social criticism and distinctive style of writing. His works continue to be studied and revered for their portrayal of American society and the human condition.